Tom Cruise… yet again

Tom Cruise is being fruity again. This time he’s decided to disguise it as aiding the first responders of 9/11, an effort that is difficult to argue with. Everyone wants those people taken care of, of course they do, but at what cost?

This is a difficult thing to argue with, it really is. I feel horrible for the first responders, and they do need help, but this is not the place to get it. Never mind how questionable the treatment is. It involves 30 minutes of exercise, taking vitamins & minerals, and spending several hours a day in a dry sauna. Sure people are going to feel better, but it is not treating the toxins these rescue workers inhaled, they’re just losing weight!

I’m not surprised that City Councilman Hiram Monserrate, the host of the Cruise fund-raising dinner, claimed such extraordinary benefits from following a health-restoring regimen inspired by L. Ron Hubbard (‘Cruise Control’ Pol: It Helped Me,” April 7).

For someone of Hubbard’s genius, it’s clearly a small step to cure respiratory diseases that have baffled doctors at our best hospitals.

Hubbard’s brilliance will shine even brighter when donors respond with millions of dollars aimed at getting those 9/11 rescue workers into saunas, taking vitamins, exercising and dieting – leaving a big cut of the donations for a few at Scientology headquarters.

That same brilliance fogs minds. It makes it impossible to question Cruise’s mission, despite the fact that a membership at a YMCA with a sauna, a bottle of niacin from the corner drugstore and a month without trans fats would accomplish as much for about a hundredth the cost.
Chris Bischof
Brooklyn

Exactly! This is no different than going to the YMCA! Instead, Cruise is soliciting millions of dollars for this program, and it is estimated he has raised $4 million already. If you look at the video on this page from WABC, you will see this is being done in a very nondescript office. Why so much money? Where is it all going?

The first responders who talk in the video about the benefits, bless them, they swear the religion is not being preached, it may very well not be, but this is nothing more than a PR sham put on by the “church”. L. Ron Hubbard was a documented “exaggerator” about his military and educational record, he wrote bad sci-fi, and by no means did he have medical training to come up with a “detox program”.

In fairness, here is another letter from the same New York Post editorial page:

For a newspaper normally on the forefront of speaking out for 9/11 rescue workers, you did us all a disservice by calling the Cruise-sponsored event a fund-raiser for Scientology.

The program is secular and not run by the church.

I wonder if your medical experts, who are calling it “hocus-pocus,” have ever dealt with the sleepless nights, leg pains, tingling in their hands and breathing issues.

Thanks to the program, I don’t. It gave me and hundreds of my fellow rescue workers our lives back.

I started the program knowing nothing about Scientology, and I know nothing about it now. I just know that, thanks to them, I feel like a new person.
Steven Mona
Greenwood Lake

I hope it is helping, I really do, but the Church of Scientology is not who I would turn to for help. They are a cult, nothing more, and their methodologies have been called into question numerous times.

Someone does need to help the first responders, and everyone who suffered from that horrible and tragic day, but anytime “Tom Cruise” and “Scientology” are mentioned in connection to anything, my suspicions are immediately raised.